Maranatha

The vision of this passage is a symbolic representation about the judgment of God, about God making all things well in the world, and establishing peace. It ultimately is about the final judgment of all things, which is the focus of Greg’s sermon.

There are two types of final judgments in the book of Revelation. First, there is the final judgment of individuals, and then there is the final judgment of humanity in history. Every individual must answer to God for how they used the “say-so” he gave them. Corporate judgments that take place in history occur when God allows masses of people to experience the consequences of the sin of the collective whole. At the end of the age, all humans that are alive will undergo a collective judgment. While John speaks of individual judgment in Revelation 20, he’s mainly focused on judgment of humanity in history.

For John and the seven churches he’s writing to, the fulfillment of Revelation would have been the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century. This is the kind of corporate judgment in history that all the symbolic destruction in Revelation is about. This has been fulfilled whenever empires have collapsed.

However, none of those collapses completely fills out the meaning of John’s judgments. The language of Revelation is always global and cosmic, pointing to the end of this age. Revelation 11:18 says, “the time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth.” Humans have only had the capacity to destroy the whole earth over the last hundred years. Previously, civilizations collapsed independently. Now, what happens to any nation has ramifications for other nations. In that sense, the ultimate fulfillment of Revelation’s destructive systems could not have taken place until the last fifty years.
This sets up the primary point of Greg’s sermon. The New Testament teaches us to anticipate Jesus returning or appearing at any moment. (See Revelation 1:1, 3:1, 22:7, Philippines 3:20-21). There is a general longing for the coming of Jesus to set things right. The early church set their sights on the appearance of Jesus to finally eradicate evil and bring God’s shalom.

In the modern world, there tends to be an optimism about the state of things. In the New Testament, there is a declaration that the present day is actually evil. Paul wrote in Galatians 1:4, “Who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” Our modern worldview has been conditioned to believe things will get better and better forever. We need to allow ourselves to see and feel the evil of our current age so that we long for Jesus’ appearance.

Thus we pray with the early church, “Maranatha,” come Lord Jesus and set all things right.